%0 Journal Article
%A Willet, Edgar W.
%A Willett, Henry
%T Notes on a Mammalian Jaw from the Purbeck Beds at Swanage, Dorset
%D 1881
%R 10.1144/GSL.JGS.1881.037.01-04.33
%J Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society
%P 376-380
%V 37
%N 1-4
%X The rarity of the fossil remains of mammals in Mesozoic strata is a palæontological fact so well known to the Members of this Society, that it would be superfluous in me to do more than allude to it.All needful information will be found in the exhaustive monograph (by one of the greatest living authorities on comparative anatomy, Prof. Owen) published in 1871 by the Palæontographical Society. From it I gather that in 1828 Mr. Broderip first discovered Didelphys in the Stonesfield-Slate quarry.In 1858 the teeth of Microlestes were discovered by Mr. Moore in a breccia of Rhætic bone-bed and limestone filling a fissure in the Mountain Limestone at Frome, in Somersetshire.In 1864 my friend Prof. Dawkins discovered a worn molar of a Marsupial mammal in the Rhsetic beds at Watcher, in Somersetshire,called by him Hypsiprimnopsis rhœeticus (Microlestes rhœetitus). But it was to the personal energy and perseverance of Samuel Beckles, Esq., F.R.S., that science was indebted for the discovery of the great variety of these interesting fossils, the descriptionof which occupies the largest portion of Prof. Owen's work (loc. cit.). My own imagination was excited by a popular account of Mr. Beckles's labours, written about 1858 by the late lamented Canon Kingsley; and the desire for further discovery caused me to pay several visits to the “Dirt-beds” at Swanage, in the hope of making further additions to the catal6gue of Mammalian remains. Although I must have spent altogether many hours in search on several occasions, aided
%U http://jgs.lyellcollection.org/content/jgsleg/37/1-4/376.full.pdf